The Councilor and the Glass

The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Rance » Wed Jun 05, 2013 4:32 am

Night still had several hours of life left. She stood in the doorway to the room and tried not to think of the blood.

You will wait outside the door to his room, Mister Catch, until I call you in. You won't be alone. I will be right beyond the door. You see? And I will knock my hand against it when I want you to enter. You will not say my name while we are in there. That's very important. Alright? We will be quick with this apology; the Constable assigned to his room will -- will likely only be eating his late-night dinner for an hour's time, and if the Councilor has spoken to them, they will not want you here.

Just lingering beyond the threshold, she thought she could feel the sticky, red mess on the palms of her hands, smeared down deep into her skin like a tattoo. The girl thought she could feel the stern steel of a needle clutched between the pads of thumb and forefinger, but nothing was there -- nothing, except a strip of bloody skirt-fabric that had faded more brown than red.

The attendants had thoroughly cleaned the floor in Councilor Treadwell's room of the footprints of blood. That night of stitching -- ninety-seven sutures, all counted one by one, the number was an indelible scar in her memory -- seemed like it had scarcely ever happened at all, at least according to the cleanliness of his private room. A single candle guttered at the bedside, illuminating enough to show the stark contrast of countless dark threads against his over-stretched skin. She had done that. She and Menna Janessa. He was not a peach or a little poque bag, but a person, a man whose breath still rattled in his lungs.

She thought to turn around and leave. She should have, but a conversation needed to happen. Despite her fear, she pulled that swatch of blood-stained and edge-burnt fabric down around her face like a mask--

(Noura had taught her about the importance of masks, how they helped keep the sloppy emotions inside and bolster strength)--

The girl peered out from two clumsily-torn eyeholes and spoke, trying to keep the accent -- and the fear -- out of her voice.

"Wake up," she said, quietly approaching the bed in Treadwell's room at the Rememdium. "Wake up, ser, so we might speak about things you have said. We all heard them. I heard them." Children, he'd sputtered in his bloody throes. Catch. Two simple utterances, and with it, a swath of blame and things unexplained.

Underneath her cloak, a thing she wore to broaden her shoulders and give greater girth to her frame, she shivered and sweat hot beads; this could only go so well before it would certainly go wrong, yet, she had to try to fix it, mend the pieces. Protect her friend. Her family.

"My name," the feminine figure pronounced, tugging the blood-stained wool of her old dress tight underneath her chin so the Councilor might not see any recognizable part of the girl, "is Scarlet Glass. I am ears in every wall and -- and a tongue in all the ears of those who matter.

"I think it is best that we talk."
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Treadwell » Wed Jun 05, 2013 1:51 pm

Treadwell had indeed been sleeping; sleeping was a passable release from the pain of a shattered hand and the numbness of a swollen side of his face. Being tugged awake, lying there in his hospital bed (though finally garbed anew in his glasses and his own nightgown, brought from home), he finds himself blinking and tired as he takes in this Scarlet Glass through beady eyes. Good, fat, left fist finds eyeglasses on a nearby stand, wiggling them onto his face.

"About. . . what, mmph mmph?" he grumbles. Treadwell is hungry. He is tired. He is still very cold and very drained, having to very slowly regain blood and warmth. His answer is short and stern and muffled. "I'd do a lot better, hmm, without your wearing--" and to save himself the trouble of speaking a couple more words, he waggles his pointer finger at this Scarlet Glass's mask.

It's good that Treadwell's left-handed, it seems.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Rance » Wed Jun 05, 2013 2:30 pm

"I heard you were hurt. I have got the ears of a bat. News travels quickly; Myrken Wood is a great beast, and news rolls over its spine like stones down a mountainface."

She stood several feet away from him. Did he know it was his blood on that tattered mask, the red refuse of his body on the night he'd been brought to the Rememdium? The edges of the woolen cloth were burnt, but even as he motioned to it, she never reached up to pull away the veil. Underneath it, she could feel her hot and nervous breath blasting the stink of dried gore back into her nostrils--

a stink like Jernoah, when the animals in the street were slaughtered with glass knives, and they all laughed, for there would be dinner come desert-cold nightfall.

Her young voice was muffled behind the mask, dulled.

"It is better I do not," she said, a crack in her voice. "What is underneath is -- is too wretched for any one man to behold."

He had been spilling all over. Her fingers had slipped through his red, red blood as she'd worked the stitches, one by one by one by one...

"Who did this to you," Scarlet Glass asked, before producing from out of a hip-side satchel a fist-sized hunk of torn bread. She took a single step on feet whose boots hung open like the mouths of panting wolves, her black-gloved fingers loosening around the milked-dough offering. "Tax-collector. A man of letters and means. A man whose prevalence and fabled name is as far-reaching as his waist-size.

"Who ever would do this to -- to a man of your high stature? Eat," she said. "Please."
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Treadwell » Wed Jun 05, 2013 2:55 pm

Aloisius is hardly one to pass up offered food, especially since he hasn't had a good meal since coming to the hospital. The bread is taken up and chomped into, slowly enjoyed and carefully chewed with his injured mouth before being swallowed.

"Catch, miss."

Clearly aware of a woman in the costume!

"Someone. . . fiddling," fat fingers on his good hand mime playing notes on such, running a bow back and forth over an invisible instrument, "led about thirty children or so, I guess. . . ." Another mouthful of the stuff, easily munched on the left side before being forced down.

"The woods, mmph, into the woods. I followed, saw 'em being eaten by a. . . ."

Not by me. I didn't touch them. Sharp recollections of tasty oak branches, a deer's hindquarter (and then the rest of the deer itself in the next two mouths' mouthfuls), a family of rabbits, and a few other fuzzy critters. No children. None.

"A beast. Jelly thing, big teeth, fiddling still, or. . . music! Playing music. Eating children."

If the already grayer than usual Treadwell could pale much more, he might at this.

"They danced into its mouth, happily! Pleasantly!" A wince, a reach up of his good hand to gingerly rub his injured right side of his jaw, which only gets a watery-eyed whimper of pain shooting through his face.

"I fled into the trees. Hit my head at some point; woke; came back out, dazed. . . ."

He swallows the last of the bread, then looks, still teary-eyed, down at his belly, more than aware of the scars there.

"Catch jumped, cut me. Cut me open! I. . . don't recall much, from there. Woke up here, you see."

Poor Treadwell, already a gelatinous, light, quaking quiver to his body, as tears break free of their doughy wells to flood his flabby cheeks.

"Damn near killed me."
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Rance » Wed Jun 05, 2013 3:29 pm

Her gloved fingers were trembling when he took the bread from them.

"I could have poisoned that bread," she said. "But Scarlet Glass does not do that. Scarlet Glass is -- is not a cruel woman."

His sentences brought images to life in her mind that matched those described by the fellows around town. Her shoulders were not as firm as she wished them to be; her feet seemed to dance with an earnest impatience, but the descriptions were nauseating, vivid, all too gruesome to fathom--

Jelly thing, big teeth, fiddling still...
Eating children...

They danced into its mouth, happily! Pleasantly!

Yet, despite his recollections, she was busy contemplating the logistics, the science of how he could even walk at all. If it were humanly possible for wooden floors to support him, or this bed to hold him aloft. He was all crumbs and tears, stitched back together by her shaking hands, and she regretted for a moment going this route at all -- to hide from him, wear dishonesty in a bloody mask, speak like she was somebody other than a stupid, afraid seamstress.

"You are lucky you fled," she said, forcing a fool's-gold steel into her voice. "You would have been quite -- quite a meal to that terrible thing.

"I have heard about the children," she said. "About how they will be burning what remains and -- and giving comfort to their grieving families. And while that is happening outside these walls, we are right here, Councilor, talking like fine friends. There is no need to cry."

Another step nearer, the frame of her heart hot with an ache to see him sob. You are fortunate to be crying -- had I not been a seamstress, had I not been there in that moment, maybe you would have died; maybe I would not be wearing this stupid mask, playing make-believe.

"This matter of -- of Mister--" A pause, her accent flaring. "Of Catch. You might have run from those woods, Councilor, or tried to flee them, but while you rest under this roof, you are still not free of them. You've still many strides to take, and the footing is unsure."

Catch jumped, cut me. Cut me open!

"I demand you tell nobody about what Catch has done to you. It would be best to keep that a secret. Attribute it to an unfortunate accident or an unexpected encounter with -- with the thing. But I implore you to stay silent, for fear of upending the order that will surely come in the wake of these bad events. For fear of upsetting those to whom Catch is so very dear.

"For fear," said the girl under the mask, lying, but thriving on untruth, "of incurring my wrath."
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Treadwell » Wed Jun 05, 2013 3:50 pm

Years past, on his entry to Myrken Wood, Aloisius Horatio Treadwell fell foul of Gad Phuri, then-governor, and his assistant, Ariane Carnath-Emory. He had been a terrified, blubbering mess, then, for a different reason: that man and his aide meant to do him certain harm, and they succeeded. Treadwell then learned of the steel beneath the fat of Gad Phuri.

Decades before that fateful encounter, Aloisius Horatio Treadwell bought the services of a would-be noble thief known as the Fox, enlisting him to steal a ledger from a man who had humiliated him in his youth on his first day's serving on the Westenford Parliamentary Council. The Fox's payment proved simple: a quick and efficient arrest after delivery of the book to Treadwell. It enraged the rogue, who promptly slit the portly Chief Magistrate's throat and left him bleeding outside his mansion estate. Treadwell had then felt steel, cold and biting-sweet, beneath the fat of his throat.

There is no true steel to this maiden, this threat-blustering mish-mash of bravado and disguise.

These are not the first tears of distress that have been wept in recent days over memories and health and pain.

Steel is this.

Steel is Aloisius Horatio Treadwell's forcing himself to sit up as he can in his bed, despite the burning sting of ninety-seven stitches tucked amid fatty rolls.

Steel is whipping his pillow out to this Scarlet Glass from where his head was resting, mostly held in his good, left grip but feebly supported with the splint over his injured right.

Steel is growling through a mouth swollen too much to enjoy a breakfast, a snack, a dinner, or a supper.

"Madam, I aim to have Catch imprisoned or hanged if law and justice allow."

A snort, a suck of breath.

"If you aim to see otherwise, you will come, mmph, unmasked when there is a trial, and you will vouch his sanity and proper state."

Another wheeze, an aching throb setting into his gut.

"Or you take this and smother me here and now."

Eyes, beady and wet, narrow tightly.

"Or you leave."

A glance at the door.

"You have no other choice or demand to make."
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Rance » Wed Jun 05, 2013 4:40 pm

Madam, I aim to have Catch imprisoned or hanged if law and justice allow.

"No," was all she could say. "No," spoken with both the weight of fear and blustery insistence, not that he should obey, but begging that the moment should still be hers, let her remain in control of it instead of watching it slip between her proverbial fingers like holy sand.

He rose, a swelling blister from the bed. The stitches creaked, moaned, or so she imagined it. He might pop like an overripe fruit if he moved any further. There would be his blood in the room again, running in little rivulets down her skirt-fronts, pattering to the floor, freshly-tapped syrup, and she would be a terrified child, pushing needles through his skin and mending the wet, seeping caverns that C___h had dug into him--

The pillow leaped through the air, a downy-stuffed missile. She gasped, twisted, threw high an arm. Her knuckles collided with the soft projectile, deflecting it so that its deflated mass thumped against the door. The motion threw aside one flap of her moth-gnawed cloak, showing a swath of dusky skirts and a poor girl's boots. The itchy mask shifted enough to display an olive-skin ear and a tumble of dark hair.

"You would put him to death," she asked, voice dipping into a whisper, "and deny the miller's boy a protector? You -- you would be as bloodthirsty as the thing itself? The man you wish to hang to satisfy your own vendetta is the moon and stars to some of us, Councilor.

"I came to you in secrecy and peace, to ask you to do what others would not be brave enough to: consider it a mistake. If -- if you were near this terrible fray, if Catch--"

(She'd only remained back to study her mathematics, while Catch and Cherny had gone to the carnival as a pair the night eleven children had died; a realization struck her like a rock-breaker's hammer)--

He ate th-th-the children. The Fat Man is wicked, so I p-p-put a knife in him, and danced in his guts.

"Catch was compromised. Confused," she reasoned, pleading, "and likely afraid. Perhaps he mistook you for -- for what he ought not. Maybe he thought you an accessory to the terror. I imagine he was scared, like -- like a little boy."
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Treadwell » Wed Jun 05, 2013 4:52 pm

Treadwell sits there, sitting up, aching. He hasn't reopened the stitches yet. . . yet.

He hurts.

He hurts.

And thus he deflates, sinking wearily, wheezily, spent onto his bed with a whimper, his arms flumping back to his sides, which only prompts another strangled, pained whimper from the feeble old tub.

"Fine! Fine!"

And then, wheezed, defeated by the agony dancing up and down his belly and setting a dull tattoo of throbbing in his temples, "Fine. . . . I'm sorry. But why did he do it?"

A wiggle of left pointer finger to accidentally thrown pillow; he'd meant to hold it, just to shove it her direction. It had slipped from his weakened grasp.

"If you please, miss?"
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Rance » Wed Jun 05, 2013 5:19 pm

The mask was stifling. When she breathed, it sucked into her nostrils, clogged her mouth. The wool clung to her pockmarked skin like it had been stitched into her. This was not her. None of this was her, this fool's errand, this bit of child's play and make-believe swagger. He collapsed back to the bed, crumbling as if he were a wet rag -- he made, at the behest of her words, a small concession. The seamstress could not manage it anymore.

A quivering hand tilted up, snared the edge of the mask, and wrenched it away. The bloody skirt-remnant was tossed to the floor, and the young seamstress -- she'd been once to his shop, had been given two crystallized sugar candies for her friends -- glared upon the torn-away mask that had been Scarlet Glass.

"Because maybe he is a fool, like I am," she said, her voice a meek bellow, no longer constrained by the fabric. "But he is one of the few things that puts a beat in my heart, Mister Treadwell, and I would lie for him if -- if I must, or do both right and wrong to keep him well."

The guise had been discarded. He motioned for the pillow. She reached down to take it up, crushing it against her chest and finally leveling her eyes upon him. "I have no wrath. Maybe Scarlet Glass thinks she is -- she is fearless, but I am not. Raise your head," she said, teetering forward with an unsure step, another one closer to his bed. She lofted the pillow on upturned palms. Her eyes never fell away from his stitches, as if they were the hinges of the world, swollen and bulging out of his skin.

"What he did to you," the girl said, "was unforgivable. No man of -- of a sharp mind may ever understand his reasons. No seamstress, either."

If he would allow, she'd gingerly lay the pillow beneath his head with all the gentleness of a hired maid.

"He is -- is outside," Gloria said. "He wants only to apologize to you."
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Treadwell » Wed Jun 05, 2013 5:26 pm

The injured toymaker, priest, tax collector, and Glutton certainly allows the careful assistance, a little stunned at the revelation of the girl's identity. He listens, despite swimminess from his brief exertion washing back over his vision, and he nods his head.

Catch wants to make an apology.

"Not alone."

A little spit is swallowed.

"Not by himself. You and him both."

Another light tremble sets him a-quiver; breath comes hoarse as he readjusts his weight on the bed.

"I. . ."

My jaw, my belly, my hand! How badly did he hurt me?

"I'm never being alone with him again. Never."
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby catch » Wed Jun 05, 2013 6:15 pm

She led him here, a hand on a trembling arm, as many times she had before - to see a boy among white - to soothe a boy made shattered by an arrow. Wait here, she bade him, her black eyes wide, her thick, seamstress-fingers tying the bloody-burn cloth behind thick, black hair. Catch did not know how someone like Gloria could be afraid, and it had filled his mind, had caused his own hands to clutch the flowers he held in them, sap leaking between his fingers, setting their fragrance.

I will wait here.

This had been a grand idea, a crafty idea, for he could not enter the Rememberdarium himself. Not if he were assured the death of the Fat Man would he enter it. Not even for poor, little Eater had he come, unless led, blinkered and drooling in his fear with every shuffling step. With her, he could finish his work. He could put out forever Treadwell's eyes, could tip the Glutton into a hole. He did not even consider that he could actually Kill the man, for it was a Thing very much like himself.

Death meant nothing to the Glutton. There would be only a Hole.

"Wait here," he moans to himself, for he has found his body alone, his Guide and his Guard behind a door. She was out of sight, and suddenly, everything was going to pieces around him, his eyes blurred as they focused on the door, on the wood-grain. At the Wait Here suspended against it, Gloria's words a physical sign.

They came with the Glass Knives, with the Leather Straps. They would bind him and hold him down and cut and cut and cut because he was a Wicked Thing, an Awful Thing -

"I wasn't Wicked," he says, his scar throbbing to his heart-beat. His brains were a wetness between the ragged lips, and he mistook his tears for blood, silently weeping at the terror that gripped his heart. Miss Gloria left him because he was wicked -

"I'm a Good Citizen!" Louder, now, he shouts, to no-one but the memories, as a madman would. He was a Good Citizen, a Junior Constable, and he had done what a Junior Constable must - had done what his hatred had commanded. So why was he so frightened? The air crowded in, and it smelled of rot and blood, and the mad who muttered and mumbled within Rememberdarium walls, shrieked and pulled at his skin. He did not realize that the musk came from him, that his clothing was drenched in sweat, that his colorful town-pants were made darker by urine and fear.

He huddled against the door, willing himself to become it, to pass through, to Wait Here away from sickness and death he did not understand. In their short moments of speaking, murmured words he could not make out, Catch had surrendered entirely to his terror, to half-memories. He crouched, his great shoulder pressed against the door, fetal, and his hands - still holding his flowers - cast up and over his head. His eyes were shut, and he whispered, over and over -

Wait Here.

He would not fail Gloria in this.
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Rance » Thu Jun 06, 2013 5:08 am

"You need never be alone with him again. But I ask that you show him your--"

How might she feel if she were in a bed, offered an apology by her near-murderer as heralded by a mere girl, one of proper birthing-age, yes, but a child in comparison, in control of nothing, capable scarcely of upholding a masquerade let alone bending any great beast to her will.

"Show him your courtesy and your reason as a Councilman. I beg you give him this, not -- not treatment as though you see him as an animal, but as a man, to help him grow less accustomed to impulse, and more to conscience. I saved your life. Menna Janessa and I," she said, as if it could be offered as a bartering chip, a branch of verbal hso’cholq meant to represent a more mature alternative.

"So I -- I put it in your hands to save his, instead of condemning him. Despite all your stitches and all the scars they will leave. I've scars as well, but if a girl can forgive, a Jerno girl, then I should think it no great feat for a Councilman to do the same."

Her movements were stiff. Her dress-sleeves and collar glistened with sweat as dark as crude and offal. Treadwell could not run, would scarcely be able to defend himself in the event of a misjudgment. She recognized his fear, dressed as it was in his old eyes and hidden beneath his bountiful skin. Had she been asked to stare into the maw of the Grand Catch that had kissed her, she would have screamed, kicked, torn herself away, spit, stabbed, anything to wrench herself out of his proximity.

But that was weeks ago. Months. And while they never vanished, scars became less prominent. They became inherent, an inexorable quality, but less and less an obstacle -- if nurtured.

A heartbeat the size of a fist pounded in the back of her jaw as she approached the door, a slithering whip-crack of black oil lashing around inside the hollowed cavity of her tooth. She turned and knocked her palm once, twice, three times against the door. Wait here, wait here, wait here, repeated a whisper from behind it.

"Catch," she said, turning the handle, smearing it with sweat. "Come in. Take my hand."
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Treadwell » Thu Jun 06, 2013 4:05 pm

Courtesy and reason.

Treadwell has these qualities, yes.

But it's not every day that the Councilor has his belly cut open and his innards nearly ripped out and his hand broken to pieces and his jaw injured.

Miserable and aching, Aloisius wriggles a little under his bed's covers, his good hand resting atop his sewn up belly.

Wet eyes blink at the doorway, waiting for Catch to come in, as a glob of helplessness begins to fill up his gut, weighing him down to the bed, prompting again that mild quivery trembling of fear.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby catch » Thu Jun 06, 2013 5:03 pm

He nearly falls, falls in, sinks into the flesh of the Rememberdarium door. He had not heard the knocks through the quivering of his own knees, the throb of his fear. It is Gloria Gloria Gloria Gloria, and is heart sings, and hope can quiver free, hope that he will not be taken, that the Glass Knives would not be put in him. In desperation he uncurls, and takes Gloria's hand with the force of a drowning man.

He does not smell his own fear-stink, he does not know that his thighs are wet, colorful cloth sticking to his skin. All he knows is Gloria, who had disappeared, and had come back to him. Treadwell is entirely forgotten, in that moment, and he smiles blindly at her, past tears and sweat and clammy skin that twitched a palsy twitch.

Then he could see past her. He could see the Fat Man, and whatever courage Gloria lent him nearly fled again.

This had been a ploy. It had been a not-quite lie. Catch had fully intended to steal upon Treadwell, to take a pillow in his great hands and press and press until he was a nothing. The addled man had counted not at all the effects of the Rememberdarium on his psyche. It was not in his nature to calculate such a thing. He stifles a gasp, and it would only be Gloria's grip on him that prevents him from falling, once more, to the floor, to prostrate himself in front of the Fat Man, to beg for the mercy he knew the terribly thing would not give.

The ceiling was dripping with slime, honey clotted with dead flies and blood and pus. He was connected to the throb of the room by webbings and tendrils of fat, quivering skin. His mouths would open - all of them - and he would say, he would say, "MY DEAR BOY WHY DON'T YOU COME TELL ME, COME TELL ME THE NUMBERS, THE NUMBERS, HOW YOUR PARENTS SANK INTO THE EARTH, THE NUMBERS, YOU ARE SUCH A PRETTY THING." And his fat hand would smooth his smock, and his mouths would shoot out, and tear little chunks out of his flesh, hundreds and hundreds of needle-glass knives

Catch clutched Gloria's hand with his own. The other clutched his flowers, sad, sad things, and before Treadwell, the addled man is stricken dumb, a thin line of drool bubbling in froth at his lips, his eyes wide and empty of anything, save fear.
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Re: The Councilor and the Glass

Postby Rance » Fri Jun 07, 2013 5:16 am

Had she known--

he was the horsehead and a swath of fire
a steel lance against the cordwood shields of countless cities
black-veined and filled with oil
caustic and destructive
ender of worlds


what she stood between--

he was the wide-mouthed consumer of all
a snarling belly whose hunger found no rest
soft-skinned and wretched with hunger
starving yet ever-fat
eater of worlds


she might have turned her back on this attempt to watch Councilor and Creator adjourn their hatred, as if one were a guilty child and the other his impudent victim. She thought her hand held some control over the situation, over her friend, over the world. His legs were darkened and he stank of warm, acrid brine. She squeezed the confidence of closeness and protection into his brutish palm, the very same one that had traced burning finger-touches across her belly only two months before--

"Councilor," the girl said, "he is not here to -- to hurt you. He brought you flowers; he brought you an apology."

And while she would have never let Cherny accept flowers from the arrow-shooter -- she would have sooner found the woman and remembered how it was to be twelve and afraid, living in Jernoah and blistering her knuckles with blood on younger girls' teeth -- Catch demanded something greater, required some more flexible sense of right and wrong by which to measure forgiveness. The stitches were ugly. Hideous. And had they been from anyone else's blade, sutured by anyone else's hand but hers, they would have been a blasphemy, an inhuman thing, an irreconcilable violence.

But they were a mistake. A mistake, or so she believed.

"You are safe," she reminded Treadwell and Catch both.

I will mend this.
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